


Ball and Chain

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Drunk Sex, Light BDSM, M/M, Object Insertion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-12-01 00:48:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11475114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: What do you have to do to take it off?





	Ball and Chain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MillicentCordelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MillicentCordelia/gifts).



> For Millicent Cordelia.  
> I am not involved in the production of Gotham, and this school is not involved in the production of Gotham. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

For a long time, he feels all right. He wakes up each morning, and goes to work. He does his job. He doesn’t even come close to firing his gun. The criminals have become docile; sheep just waiting to be herded. Harvey jokes that Jim must have picked up a few tricks from Jervis Tetch; all he has to do is open his mouth, and order’s restored. Then, Harvey frowns, thinking that he’s made a mistake. Jim wants to tell him that it’s fine. The past is now something Jim can just throw away. Something’s changed in him. Perhaps when the virus was purged from his system, it took some other things with it. Jim wallows in the luxury of neither knowing nor caring. At night, he sleeps without waking until the sun sugars the curtains. In the morning, his coffee tastes like an elixir. At night, he finds that he hardly wants to drink. He almost has to force himself to. This, alone, causes him some distress. Did he ever really like drinking? He forces the question down, into the place where all of the other unanswerables and don’t-cares have made their home.  
Leslie’s gone, and this time, Jim knows in his heart, she isn’t coming back. Somehow, even this is all right. Her absence is painful, but it’s a sweet pain. It feels like something he’s earned. Whether he wanted it or not, it’s his, now. He came by it honestly, and that seems to be all that matters.  
There are other absences, too. Barbara’s missing. Dead, Jim knows, without having to even truly consider the possibilities. People like Barbara don’t just disappear. Even a lucky escape is out of the question. People like Barbara don’t avoid danger. Somehow, they become it, and like calls to like. It was always going to be this way, he knows. He probably knew it years ago, when he first met her. It wasn’t her dazzling smile or her killer legs that drew him in. It wasn’t her apparent helplessness after the gallery was robbed, nor was it her determination to pick up the pieces and go on, though she could have given it all up. After all, she was already rich. No- he had to have known that this end was waiting for Barbara. He knew it, and he wanted it, wanted to be a part of it, somehow. He can admit that, now.  
It feels good to mourn her. It means that she’s gone. Barnes is gone, too, for that matter. In any meaningful sense. Like so many other things, Jim has shed them both. It’s like being naked, but instead of feeling the need to cover himself, he just feels free. No one is around to expect anything from him anymore. He can do whatever he wants to, now.  
Maybe he looks too hard at it, that naked feeling. Maybe he pushed his luck. It takes some time, but his freedom suddenly no longer suits him. He needles Harvey, expecting to be pushed back, but Harvey doesn’t push anymore. He halfheartedly tries to provoke Lucius Fox, and gets only detached amusement in response. It’s like being in a dream in which the city has been devastated by a disaster that left the buildings standing but the people gone. It’s no longer liberating. It’s fucking terrifying. He’s falling, and there’s no one there to catch him.  
He starts drinking in the daytime. That first year, looking at Harvey, he swore to himself that this was one thing he’d never do. Yet, here he is. The old promise just seems foolish, now, like one a boy would make. Jim hastily covers the smell of whiskey with breath mints, but he almost wants Harvey to see through him. If anyone would recognize this symptom, it would be Harvey. Then, he might puzzle out the nature of Jim’s affliction. Then, maybe, Jim would be free again.  
If Harvey knows the truth, though, he keeps it to himself. No, Harvey does know. This is his way of cutting Jim loose. It had to happen one day: Harvey’s finally saying no. Characteristically, he says it by saying nothing, at all. He’s letting Jim go to hell. After everything they’ve been through. How could he?  
At night, Jim starts going out. None of the bars he knows will do. He’d be seen there. It’s not that he fears detection; just conversation. He doesn’t want to talk to other cops, or worse, risk running into civilians he’s met in the line of duty. He doesn’t want to pretend to be normal- good old Jim Gordon, playing as hard as he works. He doesn’t want to have to pretend to be the man he was, just weeks ago. If he met that man, now, he’d knock the smile right off of his face.  
There are the clean, well-lit, respectable places. These, also, will not do. They’re full of men who look like Harvey Dent; young, handsome professionals, with their whole lives ahead of them. Men who know nothing about what Jim’s feeling. They’re virtually indistinguishable from the straight bars in the good parts of town. Privately, Jim wonders, what’s the point? If you’re going to go that far into a normal life, why not just take it all the way? Fake it. Get the wife and kids to go with your perfect facade. Anything worth doing is worth doing right.  
That’s why Jim’s here. The place is dark but for a steady violent thrum. Chains hang from the ceiling. Men stand at the bar, or sit at a few booths, deeper still in the gloom. Everyone there is in a tighter version of Jim’s own jeans and leather jacket. It’s like they’re dressed up as him for Halloween. It’s a disorienting feeling: they’re all copies, but he’s the real thing.  
He orders a beer, and keeps it clenched in his fist like an alibi. The cold of the bottle numbs his fingers, which helps to take him out of himself. He doesn’t want to be too much himself. Here, where all of the men are dressed like him, he doesn’t have to be. They can be him. Jim will be someone else for a while.  
“There’s a dress code, buddy,” he hears the bartender say. Jim knows that the bartender’s talking to someone else, but a cold thrill runs through him. Has he been found out? Does it somehow show on him? That he’s not who he says he is. He’s not like these other men, at all. What he’s come looking for, this bar can’t give him. Maybe noplace can.  
“You don’t say,” comes the response, sharp and nasal, “Oh, don’t worry; I’m just browsing. Red wine.” Then, “It wasn’t a question.”  
It almost feels good. Jim smiles, to spite himself. No matter what he loses, there are some things he can’t get rid of.  
“Oh, Christ,” Oswald says when Jim turns around. It’s August, but Oswald is in fur and leather gloves. “What the fuck are you doing here?”  
“I might ask you the same question,” Jim says, trying to sound cool. His voice roughens, though, of its own accord, and he sounds… parched.  
“Yes, because it’s a real shock to the system that I’m at a leather bar,” Oswald sneers, “You, on the other hand,” he pokes a finger into Jim’s sternum, and Jim lets him, “Don’t belong here, at all, do you? In fact, I’ll bet that some people would pay a lot of money to know that you were.”  
“Cheap blackmail tactics? You really are a Gotham City politician.”  
“Not anymore,” Oswald says tartly, and there’s a story, there, behind his eyes, but Jim will be damned if he asks. “So, what are you doing here?” he asks, now bored, already looking at the other men.  
“Probably the same thing you are.”  
“Oh, do you know Victor Zsasz? No, that’s not what you meant, is it? Why, Jim. I’m shocked. Not too shocked, though. I’ve always had my suspicions about you. So, how are you flagging tonight, left or right?”  
“Huh?”  
“What are you looking for?”  
Something must show in his face, because Oswald actually does look shocked. But only for a moment. “Oh, dear. You’re never going to get what you want if you don’t know what it is. Well, be sure to call me if you ever figure it out. I’ll bet you’ll even surprise yourself. Zsasz isn’t here,” he says blandly, “and this wine is for the birds, so I’m going.”  
“Wait,” says Jim, before he can stop himself. He puts his hand down on Oswald’s arm, and Oswald yanks it away, his eyes like pale fires in his skull.  
“Don’t touch me,” Oswald snaps, and suddenly, for the first time, for the very first time, touching Oswald is all Jim wants to do.  
“What do you think I want?” Jim asks.  
“I don’t really care,” says Oswald, and then, he grins, “but I’ll tell you what you deserve.”  
“Tell me what I deserve,”Jim says quietly.  
“To polish my shoes with your tongue,” he says without emotion, “To feel me crush the air out of your windpipe. To scream until you lose your voice.”  
“Yes,” Jim gasps, not knowing or caring what he’s saying. For the first time in he doesn’t know how long, he doesn’t feel like he’s falling. He’s already been caught.  
“What?”  
“That’s what I want.”  
“Congratulations. You came to the right place.”  
“I want it from you,” Jim says, barely above a whisper. “I want it from you,” he makes himself repeat, looking into Oswald’s eyes.  
“Why?”  
“I hurt you.”  
“No shit. What else is new?”  
“I deserve it.”  
“Yes, Jim; I know.”  
“I need it.”  
“Why?”  
“I don’t know. I just do. Please,” he makes himself say, though doing so is almost physically painful. Upon examination, he realizes that he wants that, too. “Please,” he says again.  
“I’m not fucking you,” Oswald says.  
“I don’t care.”  
“I don’t love you.”  
“Good,” Jim says, trying not feel- what?- what can he possibly feel? “I don’t love you, either.”  
“Tell me that you do.”  
“What?”  
“Tell me that you love me.”  
It’s a game. Probably not one he should be playing, but he shouldn’t be doing any of this. “I love you, Oswald. Please,” he adds.  
“Fine. I’m going now. Come with me, or stay here; I don’t care what you do.”  
That makes it easy. That makes it vitally important. That Jim follow Oswald out of the bar, and into the street, where Oswald’s car waits, a uniformed driver by its side. The driver opens the back, and they get in.  
In the car, Oswald pours whiskey from the minibar down Jim’s throat until his head feels like it’s made of fur. He cuts Jim’s tee shirt open with a small knife, and drags it down Jim’s bare chest. He pours whiskey on the scratches he leaves, and then, as an afterthought, licks it off, his tongue rough.  
In the foyer of Oswald’s home, Jim kneels on marble tiles, and kisses Oswald’s shoes. It’s only once he gets up that he realizes that a young woman with red hair has been watching him, no expression on her face. Oswald takes Jim to a bedroom. The items in it suggest that it belongs to a girl- the girl who was watching them? Maybe, maybe not. Jim picks up from the nightstand a framed photo of two dark-haired women, one young and one older, and stares at it until Oswald snaps at him to put it down. Jim just looks at the ceiling as Oswald rummages around in a dresser. He strips Jim of his jacket and the remains of his tee shirt, and sticks bobby pins on his nipples. The pain is exquisite, like a fine golden wire running through the fuzz of drunkenness. He’s so hard, he can barely breathe. Oswald tells him to kneel on the bed, and grip the headboard. Involuntarily, Jim makes a small sound in the back of his throat. Oswald pulls down his pants, then, with surprising gentleness, repositions Jim’s hips. Pain, first dull then sharp, splits Jim in two.  
“What is that?” he asks, his voice wavering. It’s all right. Like this, it’s all right to sound this way.  
“Hairbrush,” Oswald says without emotion, “I had to improvise.” To punctuate, he pushes it in deeper, and Jim groans, his head falling forward. “I’m not going to hold it, so if you want it to stay in, you’re going to have to contract your muscles. Shouldn’t be difficult, for you.”  
Jim does as he’s told, but it is difficult. It takes all of his concentration, in fact. Even more so when Oswald hits him across the back with some unknown object that fills him full of the sting of the nettle. His nerves are alive, even with how drunk he is. He can’t take it. He’s going to burst open like rotten fruit, pulp and seeds everywhere. It’s not like being turned on in the normal way, not exactly. It’s bitter and rough, and he knows that when he does come, it’s going to break him. He’s terrified. He wants it so badly, he can’t move, he can’t think.  
“Please,” he moans.  
“Please, what?”  
“Please fuck me.”  
“Do you want me, or the brush?”  
There’s only one correct answer. “You. Just, please.”  
“Now, what?”  
“Hit me some more before you do.”  
“Hit you, how? Should I punch you?”  
“Slap me,” Jim says, and swallows, “Slap my face.”  
Oswald pulls out the brush. Jim’s still tight around it, so it hurts coming out almost as much as it did going in. The relief he feels is like being drunk, twice over. But he feels so terribly empty. It’s like he’s completely hollow, on the inside.  
“Turn around,” Oswald says.  
It takes him a moment, because his pants are around his knees, but he turns to face Oswald. Jim’s panting like an animal. He can feel every wet breath that leaves his open mouth. Oswald slaps him. The pain’s like light in a dark room. “Again,” Jim says, “Please.” Oswald hits him again, then shakes out his wrist.  
“Turn around,” Oswald says. Jim does, and holds onto the headboard. The same pain ignites his nerves, but more, now. He hears Oswald breathing. He imagines he can even hear Oswald’s heart beating. He comes almost immediately, and it’s exactly what he imagined. It’s better. He feels himself weeping. He sobs loudly. He wants Oswald to hear. He needs him to hear. Oswald keeps going, harder, riding his twitching body until Jim is forced to another orgasm, this one strange and almost painful, buried deep in his body. Oswald digs his fingers into his hips, holds him still, and finishes, almost without a sound.  
Now, Jim is empty again, but it’s the kind of emptiness he felt before. It’s the emptiness of absence. Something that he didn’t need anymore was taken from him. He can mourn it, now. That’s what you do, for something dead, when you’re still alive.


End file.
